


past me, your nemeses

by akisazame



Series: the skeletons in both our closets [1]
Category: The Magicians (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - No Beast (The Magicians), Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Family Secrets, Inspired by Taylor Swift, M/M, References to Past Self-Harm and Depression, Roommates, references to past abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-16
Updated: 2021-01-16
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:14:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 16,796
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28799655
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/akisazame/pseuds/akisazame
Summary: "It's so stupid," Eliot says, his annoyance at the situation clearly curving inward and transmogrifying into self-loathing. If anyone knows what self-loathing looks like, it's Quentin. "After I walked out of Mike's apartment this morning, I never wanted to see him again, but now—" He cuts himself off with another laugh; this one sounds strangled, a desperate attempt to wrangle and mask every other emotion he’s feeling. "Is that fucked up? That I want my boyfriend with me when I see my mom for the first time in almost a decade?"
Relationships: Quentin Coldwater/Eliot Waugh
Series: the skeletons in both our closets [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2131065
Comments: 21
Kudos: 182
Collections: It Always Leads to You





	past me, your nemeses

**Author's Note:**

> miss swift bedeviled me once again!! improbably, this fic was inspired by "long story short."
> 
> thank you to [freneticfloetry](https://archiveofourown.org/users/freneticfloetry/) for the idea which inspired this idea, [the_northerlies](https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_northerlies/) for always answering my nitpicky research questions, [crushinator](https://archiveofourown.org/users/crushinator/) and [maerisk](https://archiveofourown.org/users/maerisk/) for naming liminal space, [peacefrog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/peacefrog/) for cheering me on, and [jessalae](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jessalae/) for betaing/cheering/creeping on my doc while i wrote.

It becomes very clear, very quickly, that Eliot is having a bad day.

The first sign, before Quentin even walks in the door of their apartment, is that he can hear the by-now-familiar sound of Jeff Buckley from Eliot's ancient record player. This isn't always cause for alarm, but the fact that he can't also hear Eliot's voice warbling the words to "Last Goodbye" is definitely a red flag.

The second sign is the wave of sweet aroma that overwhelms his nose when he walks in. Much like with his music choices, Eliot has well-defined tiers of stress baking, and Quentin can instantly identify this one as pecan pie, which ranks somewhere between Moderate Panic and Total Meltdown Imminent. Worse, he's pretty sure he can also smell some kind of cookie along with it, so this has probably been escalating for quite some time. "El?" he calls, toeing off his shoes next to the door and tossing his coat on the rack but not moving any closer yet. "You okay?"

The third sign is Eliot appearing in the archway that leads to the kitchen, flour coating his black apron and — in his hair? Oh no. "Great, I could use your help," he says, stepping into the living room and grabbing Quentin's sleeve. His hand is also covered in flour, and inexplicably wet. "I need you to stand here—" he pulls Quentin into place in front of the stovetop— "and stir this—" he shoves a spatula into Quentin's hand— "until it's smooth."

Quentin looks down at his assignment, which he's ninety percent sure is half-melted chocolate, and dutifully begins stirring. What else is he supposed to do? "So, are we cooking an entire elementary school bake sale for a reason, or...?"

Despite the fact that Eliot literally just put Quentin in front of the stove, he's already nudging him out of the way so he can crack open the oven and peer inside. Whatever he sees must not be to his satisfaction, because he closes it again and wanders over to the pantry, which he stares into for a long minute. "How the fuck do we not have cocoa powder?"

Quentin thinks Eliot might've used the last of the cocoa powder when he made brownies before the charity gala for the International Welters League last month, but he's not about to _say_ that. He's also not going to point out that Eliot totally ignored Quentin's question. He's just going to stand here and stir this melting chocolate until it's smooth.

After another minute of staring into the pantry, Eliot closes the door and leans face-first against it as he does a little flourish with his hand to turn off the record player. The room plunges into silence, punctuated only by the gentle whoosh of the gas burner. Finally, without lifting his head, he says, muffled, "I broke up with Mike."

Jesus. Eliot had been dating Mike since Brakebills, long before Quentin knew him. Sure, Quentin's only seen Mike maybe four times in the two years that Quentin and Eliot have lived together, but he hadn't really interpreted that as any sort of relationship problem. They'd certainly been affectionate enough, Mike and Eliot; Mike hadn't seemed to particularly enjoy Quentin's company, but that's nothing new for Quentin. "God, El, I'm—"

"He was cheating on me." Eliot says the words lightly, like he's setting up a joke. " _Had been_ cheating on me. The whole time we were together, probably." He makes a not-quite-laugh sound, then pushes off from the pantry door, turning around to lean his back against it. He's going for casual, Quentin knows, but he also knows the subtle difference in Eliot's face when he's upset and trying to hide it. "This is in violation of the Pact, but. I had never been monogamous before Mike. If he'd wanted an open relationship from the start, I would've been fine with that. And he _knew_ that about me, so I—" Eliot tilts his head back, staring up at the ceiling as though Ember and Umber Themselves might descend and give him the answer to why Mike McCormick would spend nearly half a decade lying to him. "Anyway," he says, aggressively nonchalant, "I walked right in on him fucking some blond twink from Astoria, so. Good fucking riddance."

Quentin truly has no idea what to say. The _I'm sorry_ that had been halfway out of his mouth seems ridiculously insufficient, and as much as he wants to immediately get on a bus so he can break Mike's nose on Eliot's behalf, he's fairly sure that won't actually solve anything. He changes tack instead. "So, what did you need the cocoa powder for?"

"A cake," Eliot says. He lets out a heavy breath. "It doesn't fucking matter."

It does matter, or Eliot wouldn't be upset about it. "Is that what this chocolate stuff is for?"

"Technically, yes. Keep stirring it." Quentin jumps; he'd been so distracted by Eliot's story that he hadn't noticed his arm had stopped moving. "I was going to keep a stasis charm on the ganache until the pie came out of the oven, and put the cake in after. So fucking much for that plan."

"Okay, um." Quentin can fix this, he knows he can. "We have vanilla extract, right? That'd probably be better anyway, with the chocolate? It'd be, like, a lot of chocolate otherwise."

"That was the point," Eliot says. Yet another terrible sign: Eliot generally prefers chocolate as a complement to another flavor. "Fuck it. We can just eat the ganache with a spoon. How does the texture look?"

As though Quentin would have any idea. "Uh, mostly smooth, I guess?" A bolt of inspiration strikes him. "Hey, why don't you take this back?" Eliot looks at him, already unimpressed, and Quentin nods at the pot of melty chocolate. "I'll go down to the bodega and get some cocoa powder."

"Don't be ridiculous, you just got home."

"Which means I'm still mostly dressed to go out." God, Eliot is so aggravating when he's upset. "C'mon, El, it's really not a—"

The shrill electronic ring of a cell phone slices through Quentin's sentence, and they both stare blankly at each other for a moment. It's not Quentin's, sitting still and silent in his pocket, but it's also not one of the dozen or so ringtones that Eliot has designated for everyone in his contact list. Quentin follows the sound to Eliot's phone, sitting face-down on the counter next to a stack of three already-used mixing bowls, but Eliot doesn't make a move for it, and Quentin's about to snap and answer the damn thing himself when the ringing stops.

And then starts again, ten seconds later.

"Maybe you should get that?" Quentin dares to ask. "It could be a client or something."

"Sofia always gives me client numbers in advance, for this exact reason."

Quentin has a lot of patience, but it's never been infinite. "Okay, well, clearly they're going to keep fucking calling, so could you maybe just do something about it?"

Eliot sighs exaggeratedly and sweeps across the kitchen to fetch his phone. "Hello," he says, giving Quentin a massive eye roll, as though he's already determined that this was a waste of time and it's Quentin's fault he's doing it in the first place, "this is Eliot Waugh."

There's a long stretch where Quentin can hear the muffled sound of whoever's on the other end; he can't make out any words, but he can tell the person is speaking rapidly in a high-pitched voice. Quentin keeps slowly stirring the chocolate as he watches the color drain out of Eliot's face; he looks _distraught,_ which, despite all the histrionics Quentin has been exposed to over their time as roommates, is not an adjective Quentin would've ever thought he'd need to apply to Eliot.

"C-can," Eliot starts, then stops, swallowing hard. "Can you hold on a minute?" He pulls the phone from his ear, taps the screen. "I have to," he says to Quentin, then apparently gives up on the sentence and gestures towards his bedroom.

"Yeah, yeah, of course," Quentin says, words tripping over themselves. It doesn't particularly matter, because Eliot is already leaving, quick steps and long strides taking him into his room in seconds, the door closing loudly behind him.

Well. Quentin will just stir this chocolate, then.

Except, Eliot is gone for a _long time._ Quentin hasn't exactly had a timer running, isn't sure what time he started stirring, but the chocolate probably isn't supposed to look oily, like it's starting to look now. He's helped Eliot with cooking plenty of times before, but Eliot's always been there, hovering over his shoulder and telling him exactly what he's doing wrong. The thing is, even though Eliot told him _stir until smooth,_ he's not convinced that it ever _was_ smooth. Did he miss it somehow? Was there, like, a five second window of perfect smoothness that he obliviously stirred right through? What the hell is taking Eliot so long?

By the time Eliot emerges from his bedroom, Quentin has long since given up, leaving the pot of probably-ruined chocolate in a stasis charm on the stove in the hopes that maybe Eliot can salvage it somehow. He'd taken the pie out of the oven too; it _looked_ done, and certainly _smelled_ done, and he didn't want to risk destroying a second one of Eliot's culinary projects, so. He expects some kind of snarky comment about how Quentin has _returned to his natural habitat_ — curled up on the couch with a book, a completely benign human activity — but Eliot doesn't say anything at all as he trudges across the room and sinks into his armchair.

The silence is oppressive, like a physical force on Quentin's skin, and he can only hold out for a few minutes before asking, "What was that about?"

Eliot laughs humorlessly. "That, my friend, would be in full violation of the Pact."

The Past Pact: the agreement that Eliot had accepted when he responded to Quentin's ad on LiSpace — short for Liminal Space; basically, Magic Craigslist — looking for a roommate. Quentin had written the whole thing out with fancy diplomatic language, but the essence of it is simple: Eliot will never ask about Quentin's past, and Quentin will never ask about Eliot's. There are basic facts that they've picked up about each other over the years — Quentin knows, for example, that Eliot started at Brakebills the year after Quentin did — but almost all of Quentin's knowledge of Eliot's life is present tense. The reverse is true as well, which is exactly how Quentin likes it, how he _needs_ it.

Now, watching Eliot curl into his chair, elbows on his knees and head in his hands, is the first time that Quentin regrets the Pact. Whoever was on the phone has clearly upset him even further than he already was, but Quentin's expressly forbidden from asking about it, and it's his own damn fault. He tries to keep his eyes on his book, but can't stop himself from occasionally sneaking glances at Eliot, who's staring blankly down at their imitation Persian rug.

Quentin has finally distracted himself into reading an entire paragraph when Eliot suddenly says something he has never, in the two years they've known each other, said before: "I need your advice."

Quentin blinks, closes the book, sets it on the side table. "Okay," he says, trying to sound neither skeptical or shocked. "What do you need advice about?"

Eliot sits up and runs his hands through his hair, which only serves to redistribute the flour that's still stuck in it. "So, technically, according to Pact rules, it's not a violation if I volunteer the information unprompted, right?"

It had been a loophole Quentin had written in for himself, just in case he slipped up and said something he couldn't play off as a joke or otherwise take back. As it turned out, it had been much easier than expected to pretend that those three years of his life had never happened at all. "Yeah, that's right."

"Okay." Eliot cups his hands over his nose and mouth, like he's trying to replicate the feeling of breathing into a paper bag. "Okay," he says again, a few seconds later, when it seems like he's gathered as much courage as he's going to. "So. That was my mother."

The way that Eliot says it implies that his baggage should be understood, which, of course, it is not. "You're going to have to give me a little more to go on here," Quentin says, when it becomes clear that Eliot isn't going to elaborate. "Asking questions would be a violation."

"Right, of course." Eliot laughs, runs his hands through his hair again. Quentin doesn't think he's ever seen Eliot touch his own hair as much as he has in this two minute conversation. "Quick highlight reel: my father hated me for being queer, I ran away to New York after high school graduation, and I haven't spoken to either of them since." He snorts a laugh. "Until now, obviously. I don't even know how she got my number. Sofia knows not to give it out to anyone."

Jesus Christ. No wonder Eliot was so willing to agree to Quentin's terms. He could offer some kind of meaningless platitude, but that was yet another reason why Quentin came up with the Past Pact in the first place. _Oh no, how horrible. I can't imagine having that happen to me. What do you think you'll do now?_ "So, since we're now in current events, what did she want?"

"My father's dead."

The sentence is thrown into the air between them like it's something distasteful, which Quentin supposes it is. He tries to think of how he would feel if Ember died, but all he can feel is an absence of emotion, a void where his feelings should go. He carved all that out of his heart a long time ago. "And she tracked you down just to tell you that?"

"She _tracked me down,_ " Eliot says, disdain dripping, "to tell me that my father left me something in his will, and it's very important that she give it to me in person."

"Oh." Quentin expands the metaphor for himself: what if Ember had died and Umber contacted him? He can practically imagine what it would sound like. _My brother had many regrets, but I fear he regretted what befell you most of all._ Ha. It's definitely what he'd say, but there wouldn't be any truth in it. Ember never regrets anything. "So, um, do you want my advice about whether you should go?"

"No, I'm definitely going," Eliot says. His hands are halfway to his hair again before he seems to think better of it and just rests his fingertips on his temples, rubbing slow circles. "Or, rather, she's coming here. Didn't even take much convincing, which I suppose has to count for something. She'll be here this weekend."

"Like, Friday?" It's fucking Wednesday. This is a lot. "Is she staying with us, or...?"

"God, no. She'll find a nice Holiday Inn. That bit's all on her. It's bad enough when clients expect me to also serve as their magical travel agent, so I'm certainly not providing the unpaid labor of booking Muggle flights from Indianapolis to JFK."

 _Indianapolis?_ Quentin wants to ask. That's not even remotely the theoretical hometown he'd pictured when he'd first met Eliot, tall and poised and impeccably tailored. Which is probably, like, classist of him in retrospect, but at the time he was pretty out of the loop as far as current trends, fashion or otherwise. "Okay, this still doesn't really answer the question of what exactly you need my advice about."

"It's so stupid," Eliot says, his annoyance at the situation clearly curving inward and transmogrifying into self-loathing. If anyone knows what self-loathing looks like, it's Quentin. "After I walked out of Mike's apartment this morning, I never wanted to see him again, but now—" He cuts himself off with another laugh; this one sounds strangled, a desperate attempt to wrangle and mask every other emotion he’s feeling. "Is that fucked up? That I want my boyfriend with me when I see my mom for the first time in almost a decade?"

"He wasn't ever your boyfriend," Quentin tells him before he can think better of it. Eliot, who'd been staring somewhere in the middle distance, looks up sharply, alarm and hurt painted across his face. "Well, he _wasn't,_ " Quentin insists. "Not the way that you thought he was, if he was visiting the bonobos the whole time you were together."

Eliot's expression twists into something resembling a smile. "Sorry, he was doing what, exactly?"

God. Fuck. Two years later and Quentin still gets his slang mixed up. "Uh, sleeping around, I meant." Obviously.

"Sure," Eliot says, still grinning, his voice lighting up with amusement for the first time since Quentin got back. But his mirth only survives for a moment before it vanishes, like it was never there at all. Quentin watches him take a few deep breaths, mouth slightly open, like he's winding up for whatever it is he wants to say. "I just can't stand that I'm going to meet her and she's going to see the exact same person who walked out of her house ten years ago."

Obviously Quentin doesn't know for sure, but he feels pretty confident that it isn't true. "You have a grad school degree, an extremely cool job, and a decent apartment in Brooklyn. I'm pretty sure eighteen-year-old Eliot didn't have any of that."

 _He also didn't have me,_ Quentin thinks, which is just. The idea that anyone would consider Quentin Coldwater to be an asset worth bragging about is. Well. He knows better than to get his own hopes up.

"Yes," Eliot scoffs, oblivious to Quentin's brief moment of turmoil, "I'll tell my mundane mother all about my masters in physical magic with a specialization in telekinesis and my job as a freelance magician event coordinator. Brilliant. Incredibly impressive. Fucking freelance. I might as well be unemployed."

"Okay, god, you're not _unemployed._ " They've had this argument before, when there's been a lull between Eliot's jobs and he becomes inexplicably convinced that no one will ever hire him again. "And it's easy enough to fake the specifics of your degree and your job. That's the whole point of the Brakebills Alumni Association." They'd been there for Quentin, certainly, when he'd stumbled out of the Neitherlands with nowhere else to go. "Fuck what she thinks anyway. I know it feels like it matters, but it doesn't, okay? She's not a part of your life now."

Eliot sighs, the petulant one that always indicates _god, Quentin, you are so fucking stupid_. "She was never the problem. We were both just trying to survive."

Quentin tries not to let Eliot's attitude hurt him; Quentin's emotional reactions to all of this are extremely beside the point. Still, he can't help but feel a wave of sadness for the child that Eliot once was, reviled by his own family for the crime of simply being himself. Did he have to hide his magic the same way he had to hide his sexuality? The metaphor seems a little too on-the-nose for Quentin, but sometimes real life is funny like that. "So, you're going to meet her," he says. Lay all the facts out on the table. "You can go to the Alumni Association tomorrow for a cover story. They have a branch in SoHo if you don't want to portal up to campus." He wishes he'd known that two years ago, although it _had_ been cathartic to confront Fogg about everything that had happened. "I'm sure you have something to wear, but there's plenty of time to go shopping tomorrow too if you really feel like you don't."

"None of that is what I'm worried about," Eliot says, with an undertone of humorless laughter in his voice. "If this had happened a week ago, I could've brought Mike along, made some kind of, I don't know, _statement_ about how thoroughly better my life is now that I'm not being told I'm a worthless deviant every hour on the hour. And you're right, it _shouldn't_ matter what she thinks, but."

"But it does," Quentin says softly. He stares down at his own hand, splayed palm-down over his knee, fingers twitching against the fabric of his slacks. There had been a signet ring there, once; sometimes he still feels the phantom weight of it and wonders what Victoria and Josh and Julia are doing now. Do they ever think of Quentin, the way he thinks of them? He looks up into Eliot's misty eyes and says, "I'll go with you."

Eliot's face twists, corners of his mouth turning down. "That's the most ridiculous fucking idea I've ever heard."

"No, your insinuation that you were about to go crawling back to Mike fucking McCormick just so your absentee mother could see you hold hands with another man should be the most ridiculous fucking idea you've ever heard." Quentin knows he should rein it in, shouldn't snap at Eliot when he's already so hurt and vulnerable, but he will _not_ let Eliot set himself up for even more pain. "Jesus _fuck,_ El. Are you even fucking listening to yourself? We already live together. Pretending we're dating won't be anything different from what the Alumni Association is going to do with everything else in your life. And if, by some miracle, it turns out that she really does want to keep having a relationship with you after this, you can just tell her we broke up because you're such a _massive centaur's cock literally all the time._ "

A long string of seconds pass where they just stare at each other, Eliot open-mouthed and shocked, Quentin still simmering with indignation. The familiar feelings of regret and embarrassment are right there under the surface, but Quentin makes himself ignore them for once. Nothing that he said is _wrong;_ he could've been more tactful about it, but sometimes the only way to penetrate Eliot's bulletproof facade is to strike hard and fast at the weakest seams. He won't back down, won't apologize.

"Well," Eliot finally says, turning his nose up haughtily, "I do _have_ a massive cock."

Quentin could literally kill him. He could blast Eliot's body full of magic missiles and no one would ever find the evidence. "Jesus fucking Christ, El—"

"Let's do it." Eliot stands up, a fluid motion, like he has to immediately take action before losing his nerve. "I'll go to the Alumni Association tomorrow, like you said. And then, on Friday, I'll have the distinct pleasure of introducing Quentin Coldwater, my boyfriend of two years, to Dawn Waugh." His gaze slides over Quentin's whole body; Quentin can't recall a time that Eliot has ever looked at him quite like this, and it makes him feel weirdly squirmy. "Are you free after work tomorrow?"

Eliot knows full well that Quentin's social life is nonexistent, but sure, he'll humor him. "Yeah, why?"

"Because while I certainly have something to wear, you do not. I have _standards_ for my paramours, Quentin, and you," he pauses to give Quentin another once-over, then lets out a soft breath, "are _not_ it."

Quentin bristles — this is probably one of his better outfits, as far as work clothes go — but bites it back. They've spent entire evenings bickering over far less important things; besides, no matter how Quentin feels about the whole situation, he _was_ the one who offered to help. The last thing he wants is for Eliot to change his mind, to end up texting Mike or calling Mike or showing up on Mike's doorstep. Eliot deserves so much better than that. "I take it I won't be meeting you at Macy's?"

"Oh, Q," Eliot says, leaning over to ruffle Quentin's hair, "bless your heart."

\--

Quentin, as expected, does not meet Eliot at Macy's. They end up going to at least 10 different boutique-sized shops in SoHo, where somehow all of the salespeople know Eliot by name. In every single one, Eliot sweeps through and plucks items off racks at a truly alarming rate, then drops the whole stack into Quentin's arms to try on. Quentin feels ridiculous trotting in and out of the fitting room — why does he have to try this sweater with both the black pants and the navy blue ones? can't Eliot just imagine it? — but he won't let himself complain. He's doing this for Eliot.

And Eliot is like, ridiculously in his element, more so than Quentin has ever seen him before. The closest Quentin has experienced, he thinks, was when Quentin had convinced his magical security firm to hire Eliot to plan their holiday party; Quentin had known the basics of what Eliot did for work, but he hadn't expected Eliot to actually _attend_ the party, clipboard in hand, overseeing the whole thing to ensure it all went off without a hitch. His energy now is a lot like that, except without the pall of necessity that always falls over the thing a person does as a profession, no matter how much they might love it otherwise. Eliot is incredibly knowledgeable about clothes and cuts and patterns; Quentin can hear him chatting animatedly with the salesperson as he tries on another grey shirt, which looks exactly the same to Quentin as the other six grey shirts he's already tried on but Eliot had said something about fabric and dye lots so okay, sure, whatever. He'll try on six hundred identical grey shirts if it'll keep Eliot happy.

"Hmm," Eliot says now, fingers curling thoughtfully around his own chin, studying Quentin like he's a portrait in a museum. "That's closer, I think. Try it with the maroon overshirt. No, not that one," he snaps when Quentin reaches for what looks to him like a maroon overshirt. "That's burgundy."

 _Eliot is my friend,_ Quentin reminds himself. _Eliot is my friend and he's going through a lot right now and he is my friend._ Before he has a chance to pick up an overshirt that's, like, fucking _cranberry_ or something, the salesperson — Brittany? Brianna? Bethany? — holds out what he assumes is the shirt Eliot meant. "Thanks," he mumbles, plucking it from her hand and unnecessarily turning away to put it on.

"So," Brittany-Brianna-Bethany says conversationally behind Quentin's back, "what's the story here, El?"

Quentin's not sure what she's asking at first, but Eliot doesn't miss a beat. "With Quentin? We've been dating for a bit." He doesn't sound at all fazed by the question, like he's been practicing the lie all day and has internalized it. The casual sound of Eliot's voice makes the back of Quentin's neck heat up.

" _Really._ " She doesn't sound skeptical, just— interested. In Quentin. His heart speeds up in his chest, and he prays that he doesn't start sweating into this shirt he doesn't yet own. "What happened to Mike?"

"He can tie bricks to his feet and walk into the Hudson," Eliot says cheerfully. "Turn around, darling, let us see."

 _Darling?_ They haven't discussed any of this; Quentin was under the impression that Eliot was just going to be helping him shop as a friend. Not that he'd expected some kind of bros-being-bros situation, but a little warning would've been fucking nice. He turns around, certain that his face is as red as his overshirt. "Um, how's this?"

Eliot steps forward, closing the gap between them with a single long stride. His hands brush over Quentin's shoulders first, then tug on the sleeves of the overshirt, then slip under Quentin's arms to smooth along his sides. Even through two layers of fabric, Quentin's skin sings under Eliot's touch. He looks down at the glossy laminate floor, not wanting to catch Eliot's gaze, unsure what he might see there or what his own face might be giving away.

Quentin's very first thought, when he'd met Eliot two years ago at the coffee shop across the street from Quentin's firm in Midtown, had been _oh no, he's hot._ That thought was quickly followed by a million and one de-escalations: _don't do this to yourself again; you're not ready to even think about dating yet; he's out of your league anyway._ The most important reason of all had presented itself roughly twenty minutes into their meeting, when they were trading current-events-only facts about themselves and Eliot had said he had a boyfriend. That had been all Quentin needed to hear, the door slamming shut on his burgeoning crush on Eliot Waugh, caging it forever. He'd assumed there'd be an awkward adjustment period after Eliot moved in, some kind of clash of personality that almost certainly would've been Quentin's fault for a wide variety of reasons, but from the very first day it had felt natural for the two of them to share a space. Eliot wasn't a model roommate, certainly — he had a tendency to blanket their shared living spaces with drying clothes, and his sporadic work schedule meant that he would sometimes go weeks at a time without taking his turn to grocery shop or vacuum — but he was overall very pleasant to live with, just the right amount of present in Quentin's life that he felt neither overwhelmed nor abandoned.

It's not as though Eliot had stopped being stupidly hot, or Quentin had stopped being attracted to him; nothing on Earth or Fillory could make Quentin immune to the powerful image of Eliot fresh out of the shower with a towel around his waist, hair dripping on his bare shoulders. The difference is that, before now, Quentin's feelings hadn't been actionable. They're _still_ not actionable, he reminds himself firmly as Eliot tugs at the hem of the maroon overshirt before straightening up, presumably to look Quentin up and down again. Eliot and Mike broke up _yesterday,_ in one of the top five messiest ways two people could break up. Not that Quentin would mind, necessarily, being Eliot's rebound fling, but—

"I think that's it," Eliot says, slicing through the spiral of Quentin's thoughts. Quentin looks up sharply to see Eliot smiling at him, somewhere between appreciative and self-satisfied, and immediately has to look away again. It's uncanny, seeing that expression directed towards him instead of like, one of Eliot's eighteen thousand Pinterest boards. "Can you ring these up, please, Bianca?"

 _Bianca._ Right. She prances over to Quentin and starts plucking price tags off all the clothes he's wearing. "Let me guess," she says, crouching down to get the tag beneath the hem of Quentin's pants, "you're going to wear the hunter green cashmere you bought last month."

"Hmm, I was leaning towards a vest, but I love the way you think." He follows Bianca up to the register, leaving Quentin behind next to the fitting room. Is he supposed to change back into his regular clothes? Probably, right? Not that it matters, technically, if they're buying everything he's currently wearing. Quentin's so busy turning this social dilemma over in his head that he almost misses Eliot taking out his credit card and handing it to Bianca.

"W-wait, hold on," Quentin says, somehow managing to trip over his own feet as he scrambles up to Eliot's side. Once he's there, he's not sure exactly what to say; it's not like Eliot is penniless, but Quentin knows full well how long it's been since the last time he was paid for a gig. Still, he can't just _say that_ in front of this innocent retail employee. "You, um, you really don't have to—"

Before Quentin realizes what's happening, Eliot has slipped his arm around Quentin's waist and pulled him close, pressing their sides together. "You're precious," he says, voice low and playful, as he curls around Quentin and presses a kiss to the top of his head. Quentin's face is on _fire._ "Let me spoil you for once."

"You are both _too cute,_ " Bianca tells them as she hands Eliot's card back to him. "Did you want to wear those home, Quentin? I can give you a bag for your old clothes."

"S-sure," Quentin manages. He's not able to look Bianca in the eye now either, and settles for focusing on the abstract painting of a whale on the wall behind her. He thinks it's a whale, anyway. Who knows for sure? "That'd be great."

He manages to keep it together until they're outside, waiting for the bus. "What exactly was all that about?"

Eliot had taken out his phone to check the bus schedule and still has his eyes glued to it, casually swiping with his thumb. "Whatever do you mean, Q?"

Quentin wants to smack the phone out of Eliot's hand. He doesn't, just barely. "All that— that. Couple-y stuff."

Eliot does look up then, peering down at Quentin with slightly narrowed eyes. "Oh, I apologize, was I not supposed to pretend to be your boyfriend in service of this plan where you pretend to be my boyfriend? My mistake."

"I just mean," Quentin splutters, fingers flexing on the handles of his boutique bag, making it rub uncomfortably against his palm, "it would've been nice to, like, know it was happening? You really, um, kind of blindsided me, with the pet names and the casual touching and stuff." He feels stupid, saying it out loud; who in their right mind would object to innocent displays of affection from someone who looks like Eliot? Besides, it _was_ what they'd agreed to, what _Quentin himself_ had suggested. "Sorry, I'm not being fair, I—"

"No, you're right," Eliot interrupts. He slips his phone into his pocket and perches daintily on the bus stop bench. "Come sit with me?" he suggests, patting the space next to him. "The bus won't be here for at least ten minutes anyway."

Quentin comes to stand next to the bench, but doesn't sit. "You, um. Just bought me these, so."

"I know seven different spells for getting city grime off of fabric, Q," Eliot says, but doesn't press the issue when Quentin stays right where he is. "So, like I was saying. I shouldn't have surprised you like that. I suppose I was..." His mouth twists when he trails off, a rueful little smile. "Mike and I were together for over four years, you know?"

"Yeah," Quentin says. He does know, in the roundabout way that he knows anything about Eliot's life at Brakebills; Eliot had mentioned, once, that he and Mike had originally hooked up near the end of their first year.

"I had these big ideas," Eliot goes on, not acknowledging Quentin's acknowledgement, his gaze glassy, inward-turned, "about how people in relationships were supposed to treat each other. Fueled by watching too many romcoms, certainly, but nothing about what I believed seemed especially unrealistic. But Mike wasn't any of that. We'd cuddle and kiss and have truly spectacular sex, but it never felt how I'd thought it would feel. After a while, I decided I must've been wrong, that what I'd thought relationships must be like was simply a romantic fantasy." He puts his hands down on the bench, leans back slightly to stare up at the inky black of the sky. "I don't think I'm making any sense."

All that Quentin has ever known has been fantasy, and never, not once, has reality lived up to it. "You're making sense."

Eliot tilts his head to look at Quentin, a completely different kind of scrutiny from back in the boutique. "I was treating you the way I'd always wanted Mike to treat me," he says. "That's all."

Something twinges in Quentin's chest, a pebble hitting a pane of glass, cracking, splintering. He feels like a terrible friend for not noticing any of this before, but maybe that explains why he'd barely ever seen Mike. Maybe Mike knew all along that he wasn't what Eliot deserved. But then... that's worse, isn't it? "I," Quentin starts, then stops, not sure how he wants to finish, what he wants to say. "I don't know if you were wrong about what relationships are like, but." God, this was why he’d let Julia handle all the official proclamations. "But, um, assuming you're _not_ wrong, then that's what you deserve. You deserve to be treated like that. Treated well. Spoiled or whatever." Heart pounding fast, Quentin tears his gaze from Eliot's wide-eyed face so he can fumble his phone out of his pocket. "Let me pay you back for the clothes."

"You really don't—"

"It would make me feel better, okay?" He sends a tiny jolt of magic into his phone with his thumb, unlocking his bank app, before realizing he has no idea how much anything cost. "Did Bianca give you a receipt?"

"Nope," Eliot says, turning up his nose, "and I won't be telling you, so. Guess you're stuck being the beneficiary of my boyfriendly generosity."

Quentin hates this, but he's not about to _guess_ how much Eliot spent on these clothes. He'd absolutely get it wrong and embarrass himself. "Then you have to let me pay for dinner tomorrow."

Eliot laughs. "Please, my dead father's life insurance is paying for dinner tomorrow, thank you very much."

"Okay, well." Quentin fidgets with his phone, tapping the volume buttons up and down, trying to figure out a solution that they'll both agree to. "I don't know, you have to let me make it up to you somehow."

Abruptly, Eliot stands up and steps in front of Quentin again, looking down at him with a considering expression. "Am I allowed to casually touch you, Q?"

Quentin's heart leaps into his throat. "Uh, yeah? Th-thanks for ask—"

His sentence is smothered as Eliot slips his arms around Quentin's waist and reels him in, squeezing tightly. Quentin's face is pressed against Eliot's chest, the buttons of his shirt digging into Quentin's cheek; when he breathes in, he can smell the sandalwood from Eliot's favorite soap. He lets his eyes slip closed, lets himself sink into the warmth of it, the comfort of letting another person hold him close and safe. Despite Quentin's protestations, tonight was far from the first time Eliot had ever touched Quentin — Eliot, as far as Quentin can tell, is a tactile person by nature, and that quality only becomes more pronounced as his comfort level increases — but it had never been quite like it was back in the boutique, with an undertone of romantic affection. It's never been quite like this, either; this, to Quentin, feels like they're surrendering something to each other, and trusting the other to keep it safe.

When was the last time Quentin felt truly protected? He can't remember.

"You don't have to make anything up to me," Eliot says. Quentin's head is tucked tightly under Eliot's chin; he can feel the vibrations of Eliot's throat when he speaks. "I'm going to owe you for a long, long time."

Quentin doesn't think that's true, but he's willing to let Eliot believe it.

\--

There's no Jeff Buckley playing, but Quentin immediately senses that something's wrong when he gets back to the apartment after work on Friday afternoon. A disturbance in the Force.

The kitchen isn't in any greater state of disarray than they'd left it last night — which isn't great, actually, since it was Eliot's turn to clean up after dinner, but Quentin's willing to let it slide today — so the next place Quentin knows to check is Eliot's room. Sure enough, that's where he finds Eliot, and also the entirety of Eliot's closet, spread across the bed and strewn over the floor. Eliot is standing in front of his full-length mirror, dressed in a black shirt and slacks with a maroon-and-gold brocade vest. He keeps turning minutely, checking the outfit from every possible angle; Quentin watches him do this for a full minute before lightly knocking on the frame of Eliot's door.

Eliot visibly startles before noticing Quentin's reflection in the mirror. "Sorry, I didn't hear you come in," he says without turning around. His voice is higher than normal, breathy, almost panicked. "As it turns out, I actually _don't_ have anything to wear."

"That's demonstrably untrue. It looks like the Garment District threw up in here." Quentin carefully enters the room, doing his best to avoid stepping on anything. "Do you want a second opinion?"

"No offense, Quentin," Eliot says, in the exact tone of voice that signals that what he's about to say is, in fact, incredibly offensive, "but your fashion advice would only be useful if I had a mental breakdown and started dressing exclusively in jeans and ill-fitting sweatshirts."

Yeah, that was pretty offensive, but Quentin's heard worse. Quentin's heard worse _from Eliot._ "Okay, well, unless you want to start surveying your Instagram followers for opinions, I'm what you've got. What's wrong with what you're wearing now?"

"Nothing. Everything." Eliot sighs and finally turns around, holding his hands out at his sides in a little _ta-da_ gesture. "Imagine you're a middle-aged midwestern housewife whose husband just died and you're meeting your estranged son for the first time in ten years. Would you want him to look like _this?_ " He enunciates the _this_ in an extremely tortured way, as though he's dressed in wet grocery bags and sewage instead of what looks to be a well-tailored, fashionable ensemble.

"Y-yes? Yes." The way that Eliot incredulously raises his eyebrows indicates that this was the wrong answer. "Okay, what about the hunter green sweater? The one Bianca suggested?"

"It made me look like a dad. A good-looking, well-dressed, eminently fuckable dad, but a dad nonetheless." Eliot turns and paces two steps, then turns back, looking at Quentin with an anguished expression. "Maybe that would be impressive to her? If I looked like a dad? I'm twenty-seven, maybe twenty-seven is the age I should start looking like a dad. Is a queer person less threatening if he looks like a dad?"

Quentin cannot engage with the mental image of Eliot as an eminently fuckable dad. Instead he takes a step forward and tentatively runs his fingers over the brocade of Eliot's vest. He's going to have to get used to acting like Eliot's boyfriend, so he might as well start now, in the safe space of their apartment. "You look amazing, El," he says, soft, sincere. "Would it help to see it next to my outfit?"

Eliot glances down at Quentin's hand, still barely touching Eliot's chest, then looks back up, the pinched lines of his face slowly smoothing away. "That's... a really good idea, Q."

"I have those sometimes." Quentin lets his hand drop, suddenly embarrassed. "Um, I'll just be a minute, okay?" He nearly trips over a pile of shirts in his haste to leave the room, and it's only a moment before he's safely in his own, door half-closed, face-to-face with his new clothes, which Eliot has apparently laid out for him on the bed.

When Quentin had first met Eliot, he'd seemed effortless, laissez-faire. He held himself with the sort of confidence that Quentin had always admired but could never hope to attain; Eliot gave the impression that he knew himself, and accepted himself, and fuck what anyone else thought. It didn't take long after they'd moved in together for that image to begin to unravel, when Quentin had found Eliot paralyzed in front of his mirror, chewing nervously on his thumbnail as he tried to decide between two identical-to-Quentin neckties before his first meeting with a new client. Once Eliot had constructed the perfect vision of himself, he inhabited it fully, but the construction of that perfect vision was almost always unbearably fraught, an hours-long process which Quentin had seen end in actual tears on more than one occasion. As it turned out, Eliot cared deeply what other people thought of him, a consuming obsession with being liked and admired which Quentin knew from experience was born from self-hatred. It had been unfathomable to Quentin that Eliot could have ever hated himself, could maybe _still_ hate himself, until two days ago, when Eliot had been forced to divulge the reason.

He's gotten dressed on autopilot, and as he looks down at himself, wearing the outfit Eliot had chosen for him, a tendril of doubt breaks through the fragile shell of Quentin's composure. If Eliot wants to impress his mother, to show her how much better his life has become, he's certainly not going to do that standing next to Quentin, the perennial fuck up, who takes every opportunity he's handed and ruins it. He's only managed to maintain the life he has now by not letting himself get too comfortable, not letting anything or anyone get too close to his heart. Even Eliot, who Quentin spends the most time with by far, is kept at a careful remove. This thing that he's doing tonight, even just pretending at being Eliot's boyfriend, is the closest thing to intimacy he's allowed himself since—

There's a gentle knock at Quentin's door, and he turns to see Eliot standing awkwardly outside, still wearing the maroon-and-gold vest outfit but now with a black tie draped over his shoulders. "Usually you get dressed in ninety seconds. I wanted to make sure you hadn't choked yourself to death on your shirt collar."

Normally that sort of joke wouldn't bother him, but it hits his brain all wrong. Quentin sits down heavily on the corner of his bed, staring down at Eliot's socked feet so he doesn't have to see his face. "Maybe we should call this off."

Eliot doesn't respond right away; when he does, it's quiet, controlled. "What makes you say that?"

Lots of reasons, but Quentin opts for the most obvious one. "Look at me," he says, gesturing down the length of his own body, "and look at you." He waves his hand in Eliot's general direction without looking up. "Unless I lie and say I'm stupidly rich, no one is going to believe that you'd voluntarily date me."

Another long pause, and then Eliot's hand appears in front of Quentin's face. He hadn't even heard him come into the room. Quentin looks up to see that Eliot is sort of half-smiling. "C'mere, Q."

He lets Eliot haul him to his feet, lets Eliot drag him back to his own room, lets Eliot position him in front of the full-length mirror. Eliot stands directly behind Quentin, and he reaches around to cup Quentin's jaw, tip his head up so he has no choice but to look at his own reflection. Only after he's sure Quentin is looking does Eliot let go and step to the side, repositioning his hand so it rests on Quentin's hip.

They look— a little mismatched, honestly; Quentin's outfit is far more casual than Eliot's, but the maroon of Quentin's overshirt is nearly a perfect match to the maroon of Eliot's vest. It's not just the clothes, either: Quentin's always been a little embarrassed by their height difference, but standing next to each other like this makes them look complementary, Quentin's frame tucking comfortably into Eliot's hold. He can't stop staring, taking in the picture of them; they look like an actual couple, one Quentin wouldn't think twice about if he saw them at a restaurant or a movie or attending a play, other than the familiar stab of jealousy he always feels whenever he sees two people who've managed to somehow find one another and not immediately and irrevocably fuck it up.

"So," Eliot says, his eyes meeting Quentin's in the mirror, "what were you saying?"

Quentin feels like he's going to cry, which is fucking ridiculous. It's just Eliot. "What were _you_ saying?" he counters, spinning out of Eliot's hold and batting his arm away. "D'you still think _everything_ is wrong with that outfit?"

"I'm not convinced about the tie, actually." Eliot's still staring at himself in the mirror, face scrunching up in a way that's less self-deprecating and more self-critical. "I'll take some pictures of my options and text them to Margo. I imagine she'll be able to get back to me in the time it takes to do hair and makeup." Eliot doesn't move, but Quentin watches his eyes flicker to Quentin's reflection, followed by a devious grin. "You should let me do you, too."

Oh god. "I would look _really stupid_ in makeup, El."

"Nonsense," Eliot says, rounding on him, grabbing Quentin's wrist and leading him back out of the room and into their shared bathroom. Almost all of the products arrayed around the sink are Eliot's, except for one or two items that Eliot specifically bought for Quentin. "I'm not going to give you a full face. Take those shirts off and I'll give you a proper shave at least."

Quentin tugs his hand free and wraps his arms across his waist as he backs up into the corner, next to the shower stall. He knows his face is red, but there's not much point in trying to hide it in their tiny bathroom. "W-what's wrong with the way I shave?"

"Nothing, for your normal purposes. If you ever went on dates—" okay, ouch, was that really necessary? "—then I would've instilled some proper hygiene into you. Unless you're going for more of a scruffy, rugged vibe—" Eliot pauses and turns away from the various implements and products he's been arranging next to the sink, giving Quentin another careful once-over. "Which, for the record, I think you could pull off — then generally you'll want to clean up your five o'clock shadow before going out on the town." He turns back to the sink and picks up a bowl with a puck of soap in it, then turns on the hot water and runs a little brush under it, which he uses to lather up the soap. Quentin stays plastered in the corner, heart pounding in his ears, trying not to panic or dissociate as Eliot thoroughly wets a washcloth and then squeezes it back out. When he finally turns toward Quentin again, his whole face softens in a way that makes Quentin's stomach turn over itself. "I don't have to do this if you don't want me to, Q."

"N-no," Quentin blurts out, scrambling to take off his overshirt, then the gray shirt beneath. "No, you should, I mean. I should be up to your, um, standards, or whatever."

Quentin's head gets caught in his shirt for a minute, because of course it does, but when he finally gets it off he sees an expression on Eliot's face that he can't quite define. It's not pity, exactly, but maybe something adjacent, and there's the telltale crease between his eyebrows that he always gets when something is annoying or unpleasant. It's gone before Quentin can analyze it more closely, smoothed into a reassuring smile. "Please sit, sir," Eliot says, gesturing expansively to the toilet seat.

The absurdity makes Quentin laugh, loosens some of the tension he's been holding in his body ever since Eliot dragged him in here. Once he sits, Eliot starts gently blotting at Quentin's neck with the damp towel. It feels nice, indulgent, and Quentin lets his eyes drift closed, focusing on his breathing so he doesn't start hyperventilating instead. After the towel, there's the gentle pressure of the brush, spreading soap on Quentin's skin in soothing swirling motions.

"You can keep your eyes closed if you'd like," Eliot says; his voice is incredibly soft, but much closer than Quentin had expected. "Just make sure you hold still, okay?"

Quentin's eyes flutter open, readjusting to the light. Eliot is crouched right in front of him, holding a razor that doesn't look much different from the one Quentin normally uses. "I thought you'd be using one of those long sharp ones?"

"A straight razor? I could. I learned how, back in undergrad." Eliot reaches out with his right hand, tilting Quentin's head to the angle he wants. "But unless skin falls under the umbrella of minor mendings, I'd rather not. I could hurt you very badly."

 _You could anyway,_ Quentin thinks. "Oh, um. Okay."

"Don't move," Eliot whispers as he leans in and guides the razor over the skin of Quentin's neck.

It doesn't take as long as Quentin expects it to, though Eliot is much more careful and meticulous than Quentin is when he's doing it himself. Even so, it's hard to hold still with Eliot's face so close to his, Eliot's warm breath against his skin, Eliot's gentle fingers cradling his jaw. Quentin feels a little lightheaded when Eliot finally stands up and goes to rinse everything thoroughly.

"Come over and wash your face. You can use some of my aftershave; yours smells like cough syrup." Eliot moves out into the hall so Quentin can take his place in front of the sink. Somehow using Eliot's aftershave feels even more indulgent than letting Eliot shave his face; Quentin's always liked the way that the orange blossom smell of it complements Eliot's soap. Maybe it's weird, he thinks abruptly, that he's paid so much attention to what his roommate smells like, but there's just— a comfort in it, knowing someone well enough that you develop sense memories for them, not just scents but sounds and feelings too. Besides, all his expensive products are sitting right there next to the sink all the time; of course Quentin would learn all the fragrances.

Quentin lets Eliot rub some kind of product into his hair next, which doesn't seem to do much other than make it shiny in a good way without being shiny in a greasy way. Once he's done, Eliot gets very close to Quentin's face again, staring directly into his eyes in a way that makes Quentin feel like he's going to spontaneously combust.

"You would look good with eyeliner, I think," Eliot tells him, like this is a totally normal thing to say. The flecks of green in his irises are especially pronounced in the harsh bathroom light.

Quentin swallows, and is pretty sure Eliot hears him do it. "Um, no thank you."

Eliot shrugs and turns away, settling himself in front of the sink. "Suit yourself. You can get dressed again, if you'd like."

Yes, Quentin very much would like, though he kind of feels like he needs to towel himself off first so he doesn't immediately soak his fancy shirt with nervous sweat. He snatches the shirts from where he left them on the towel rack and shuffles out into the hall to get out of Eliot's way.

He needs to calm down. He _has_ to. Eliot is counting on him to be there for him tonight. Quentin's under no illusions that he can pretend to be a model boyfriend who will sweep Dawn Waugh off her feet, but he'd settle for being moderately impressive. Network security technician is a pretty impressive job, right? Sure, he has to leave out the fact that it's for _magical_ security networks, but it's not like she's going to ask him to troubleshoot an internet firewall over dinner. Although, technically, if she _did_ ask him to troubleshoot an internet firewall over dinner, he could probably fake his way through it; Clarke's third law is far more true than most people know, with, of course, the exception of accomplished technomancer Arthur C Clarke himself. He'd probably have to do some fancy metacomp on the fly to adapt Lamarr's Variable Spectrum to interface with mundane hardware, but the theory between the spell and the actual implementation of wifi isn't so far removed that he shouldn't be able to—

" _Fuck,_ " Eliot says.

Cautiously, Quentin creeps towards the bathroom, trying to get a read on the situation without making Eliot even more distressed. Eliot's back is to the door, but Quentin can see that he's hunched over the counter, which now has the entire contents of his makeup bag strewn across it. He keeps pawing through all the items, shifting them minutely back and forth, very obviously in search of something and very obviously not finding it. As much as Quentin doesn't want to rock the boat, he also doesn't want a repeat of the cocoa powder incident. "What is it?"

Eliot doesn't turn, doesn't look up, but does lean heavily against the sink, both hands balled into fists. "Eyeliner. Fuck. I don't remember finishing that pencil but apparently I did." He sounds utterly defeated, lifeless and dull, not like himself at all. "It's probably fine, right? She wouldn't have liked it anyway. It would've been too much."

Ember's hairy tits, Eliot sounds like _Quentin._ Unacceptable. Quentin tugs the grey shirt back on, sets the overshirt aside for later, and marches off towards the entryway of the apartment, where he left his shoes and coat.

"Q?" Eliot calls after him.

"I'll be right back," Quentin shouts back, slipping out the front door before Eliot can protest further.

If Eliot had his way, he'd special-order all of his favorite products directly from the manufacturers, but dry spells between gigs or emergencies like this one mean that sometimes he has to improvise. Even in those situations, he still has brands that he likes more than others, that he'll go out of his way to procure if it's at all feasible to do so. Luckily for Eliot — and, in this case, luckily for Quentin — there's a Sephora only a few blocks from the apartment. The salesperson, sensing Quentin's general cosmetological incompetence the way a shark senses blood, immediately makes a beeline for him, but he's making his own beeline towards the exact type of eyeliner he already knows he needs. "I'm good," he tells her when he turns around from the display to see her still hovering, and holds up the pencil as proof. She doesn't even have the decency to look chagrined about it, which is fucking typical.

Twenty minutes later, Quentin is back at the apartment, half expecting to find Eliot in tears but instead finding him sitting in his armchair, palms flat on the arms and head tipped back towards the ceiling. He stands up when he hears Quentin come in, a flurry of emotions on his face. "Jesus, Quentin, I called you six times."

Oops. In his haste, Quentin had forgotten his phone on his dresser. Rather than engage with that, he just crosses the room and holds out the little plastic bag to Eliot. "You're really taking the thunder out of the fact that I'm the best fake boyfriend in recorded history."

Eliot's eyebrows knit together as he takes the bag, which only makes what happens next even better: the way that Eliot's face slowly blossoms into surprise, followed by delight. "You know you could've just gone to the bodega."

"Yeah, I could've," Quentin concedes, but some shitty bodega eyeliner wouldn't have made Eliot smile the way he's smiling now. "Go put that on. Your face looks weird without it."

"You're the expert in having a weird face," Eliot counters, but it's entirely lacking in malice. He's still grinning as he disappears into the bathroom; Quentin feels radiant, like he's walking on clouds. Like he can do absolutely anything.

\--

 _I can't do this,_ Quentin thinks desperately as the cab pulls up to the corner next to the restaurant where they've arranged to meet Eliot's mother. He'd gotten increasingly nervous on the ride to Williamsburg, his thumb worrying against his palm, and now he's reached some kind of invisible boiling point, a tea kettle whistle ringing in his ears. Eliot slides out of the cab on the sidewalk side and Quentin sits motionless, staring straight ahead, terrified to move. He's absolutely going to fuck this up, the way he fucks everything up, and—

"Q," Eliot says.

Quentin forces himself to turn his head; Eliot is standing outside the door of the cab, his hand outstretched, just like he'd done back at the apartment before he'd made Quentin look in the mirror. It had turned out fine then, hadn't it? He can't abandon Eliot now. He grasps Eliot's hand and lets him drag him out of the cab, hoping Eliot doesn't notice how sweaty his palm is.

The restaurant is one that Quentin's never been to before, nice but not overly fancy. A good place, he thinks, to take a midwestern housewife to impress without overwhelming her. It's fairly crowded, which isn't surprising for a Friday night, but all the people make Quentin even more nervous. It's one thing to pretend to be Eliot's boyfriend for his mother; it's another entirely to pretend to be Eliot's boyfriend for a whole audience. He scans the faces of everyone sitting in the waiting area, trying to decide if any of them look similar to Eliot. Or maybe she doesn't look similar to him at all; maybe she's short and blonde and curvy and plain. She could be anyone in the room and Quentin could have no idea at all, and that's _terrifying_.

Eliot finishes checking in with the hostess and comes back to where he'd abandoned Quentin next to a coat rack. "Of course she's not here yet," he says, rolling his eyes expansively. "I don't think she was ever on time to a single thing when I was a kid."

The offhandedness with which Eliot tosses off this fact about his childhood catches Quentin off-guard. It makes sense that Eliot would start voluntarily sharing facts about his past, considering that he's about to literally confront it, but Quentin suddenly feels like maybe this is something they should've talked about before now. A primer, or something. Not that Quentin could've been the one to bring it up, of course, because of his own idiotic rules. "Um, should you text her? Call her? Make sure she has the right address?"

"I'm sure she does." Eliot leans against the wall next to the coat rack; he's trying to look nonchalant, unaffected, but Quentin notices how he's fidgeting with one of his rings, spinning it around and around with the pad of his thumb. "I'll give her ten minutes."

"El," Quentin says, trying not to sound annoyed but not quite managing it. "She came all this way."

"Allegedly. Maybe she was late for her flight too." Quentin raises an eyebrow, and Eliot sighs. "Fine. Fifteen minutes."

It's closer to twenty minutes before a small woman in a brown coat with a scarf over her hair comes into the restaurant, scanning the waiting area before her gaze lands on Eliot. Quentin thinks maybe he was right after all about Dawn Waugh not looking anything like her son until she pulls off the scarf to reveal an unruly mop of dark, curly hair. "Eliot?"

Quentin can feel Eliot straighten next to him, can practically sense the tension in the air. "Hi," Eliot says, one strangled syllable.

Dawn stares up at her son like she's never seen him before — which, maybe she hasn't. Not the way he is now, anyway. Because of the Past Pact, Quentin had never had any reason to imagine what Eliot was like as a child; it was easiest to believe Eliot has always looked the way he does now, poised and impeccably dressed, but seeing Dawn in her threadbare coat is making him rethink all of that. Only thirty seconds have passed and the atmosphere is already unbearably awkward. Dawn looks conflicted, both hands gripping tightly to the strap of her purse like she can't decide what else she should do with them. "I'm sorry," she finally blurts out, "that I didn't try to—"

"Jesus, let's not do this already," Eliot interrupts. "All our best fights always happen over dinner. Shall we?" He pushes himself off the wall and glides right past Dawn to inform the hostess that their party is complete, leaving Quentin and Dawn to stare at each other.

"Um, sorry," Quentin says, before he's even really thought it through. He feels like he's twelve again, trying to soothe tensions between his mom and dad so they can maybe get through Quentin's birthday party without screaming at each other for once. "I'm Quentin, Eliot's—" He breaks off, the next word catching in his brain. Does he say _boyfriend,_ or would _partner_ go over better? He tries again, but all he manages to get out is "I'm Eliot's."

Quentin doesn't have time to self-flagellate before Eliot reappears at his side. "Quentin is my boyfriend," he says firmly, which Quentin supposes settles that, "so let's be on our best behavior."

Dawn looks like she wants to say something, but she doesn't, and the silence among them feels suffocating as the hostess leads them to their table. Out of some misguided notion of self-preservation, Quentin hadn't really let himself extrapolate what it might actually be like to meet Eliot's mother, but he's pretty sure he wouldn't have predicted Eliot's outright hostility. He learned early in their acquaintance that Eliot has the capacity to be mean, even cruel, but this is a level above anything Quentin's seen before. For the first time in recent memory, Quentin wishes he had a psychic discipline, so he could know what Eliot is thinking, or could tell him without words that he's coming on too strong. As it is, the best he can do is try and reach for Eliot's hand, but he's barely able to brush his fingertips against Eliot's before Eliot shies away.

"Well," Eliot says, once they're seated and he's ordered a bottle of wine for the table, "shall we get right to it, or must we exchange pleasantries first?"

Quentin can't take this. He slides his left foot to the side, slamming it into Eliot's right, and Eliot looks over at him, plainly annoyed. "Can I talk to you for a second?" he mumbles under his breath.

Eliot's eyes cut across the table to Dawn, then back again. "Surely you can say whatever it is in front of my mother."

If they weren't in mixed company, Quentin would cast Maxwell's Cone of Silence and chew Eliot out right then and there. Maybe he would anyway, if the spell weren't so fucking flashy. As it is, he's not about to magically out himself, no matter how frustrated he is with Eliot's childishness. "No, I really can't."

"Fine." Eliot rolls his eyes, then pushes his chair back and stands. "Excuse us for a moment," he tells Dawn, before Quentin hooks his arm through Eliot's and drags him off towards where he assumes the restrooms are.

Quentin rounds on Eliot once they're in the vicinity of the restroom doors, safely out of Dawn's earshot. "Can you just be civil with her for an hour?" There's a pleading note in his voice that he hadn't intended. "I don't know what your deal is with her, and obviously I'm not asking, but—" He can see Eliot winding up to retort, and Quentin holds up his hand. "Give me a fucking second, Eliot, all right? I don't speak to my mother either, so spare me the assumption that I'm going to tell you that you owe her anything because of genetics. But if your father — who you _also_ don't owe anything, by the way — left you something in his will or whatever, then there's a legal obligation to give it to you, so just bite your tongue and let her do it so you can go back to your life of organizing magical ragers, okay?"

Eliot blinks at him, momentarily dumbfounded, before that blank expression is replaced by a haughty frown. "Most of the events I plan are very classy, Quentin."

Quentin snorts a laugh. "Yeah, the Brakebills Naturalists reunion was a real garden party."

"Very funny," Eliot says — though he is smiling, just a little, so Quentin will count that as a win. "Fine. I shall behave with the utmost decorum just for you, my dearest."

It's all part of the act, Quentin knows, but that doesn't stop the thrill of emotion that zings through his chest at the endearment. "Hey," he says, reaching out to grip Eliot's shoulder, just so he can be sure he has his full attention. "I'm here for you, okay? I'm on your side. Two against one."

"Even you could beat up my mother, I think," Eliot says lightly. Quentin glares up at him until Eliot's sarcastic mask falters. "Yeah, okay. You're right. Two against one."

The wine has already been poured by the time they get back to the table, which Quentin knows Eliot hates, but Eliot doesn't make a fuss for once. He picks up his glass and swirls it, breathes in its scent before drinking; it must be acceptable, because he doesn't pull a face. Quentin takes a sip of his right after, desperate for something to do while he waits for one Waugh or the other to initiate a conversation. It's a decent red, in Quentin's opinion, though his qualifications for a good wine are basically limited to drinkability. Eliot's the one with an actual palate; if it's good enough for Eliot, it's certainly good enough for Quentin.

Dawn, for her part, has her wine glass cradled in both hands, her palms resting against the bottom of the bowl. She hasn't tried it yet, as far as Quentin can tell. She's staring at the surface of the liquid like it's a scrying bowl, as though she can use it to foresee the correct path through this conversation. It's not a bad idea; Quentin wishes he'd thought of it. "Eli— Eliot," she finally says; Quentin's not sure whether it's a nervous stumble or an inadvertent childhood nickname. "You didn't tell me you'd be bringing your boyfriend."

The specter of Quentin's mother rearranges the sentence: _Why didn't you tell me? Why didn't you warn me?_ He wants to be charitable, wants to believe that Dawn doesn't mean it like that — there's curiosity on her face, not annoyance — but Quentin's pulse is already thrumming in his ears, waiting for the fallout. "Um, well," Quentin stammers, before Eliot has a chance to respond, "that's my fault, actually. I basically forced myself on him." Oh god, _phrasing._ "As, um, moral support."

"That's very thoughtful of you, Quentin," Dawn says. Her eyes flicker from Quentin, to Eliot, back to her wine glass, back to Quentin again. "How did you two meet?"

Quentin glances over at Eliot, but he seems content to let Quentin take the lead. It's fine; they did discuss this part on the ride over. "Craigslist, after grad school. Well, after grad school for Eliot; I graduated a year before him, but I was just moving back to the city." Kind of a lie; he should have graduated a year before Eliot, but that's not what the date on his diploma says. "I needed a roommate, Eliot responded, and we started dating not long after that."

"So, you lived together first?" Quentin holds his breath; he hadn't anticipated this being her objection. Should they have fudged the timeline, said they dated and then moved in together right away? Is that trashier? "That's very lucky," Dawn continues. Her voice lilts pleasantly, not so much a southern accent as the echo of the echo of one. "That y'all got on so well, I mean. I hear it's risky, meeting people on the internet."

That isn't the case on LiSpace; on top of the obvious warding that keeps the site exclusive to magicians, there's a filter that screens all the posts and responses for intent, which has nearly eliminated unsavory activity. Some of the spellwork is outsourced to Quentin's firm, though he doesn't work on it himself. Of course, he can't say any of that. "Like you said," Quentin replies, looking towards Eliot again, "we were very lucky."

"Yes, well," Eliot says breezily, seemingly ignoring the sincerity in Quentin's statement, "if we weren't compatible, we would've broken up long before now." Quentin can hear the bitter note in Eliot's voice, buried under layers of artifice, and he wonders where Eliot would be now, if he'd realized sooner that Mike had been lying to him. Certainly not here with Quentin; he'd have a real boyfriend, one who recognizes Eliot as the treasure he is, and they would at least be living together, if not engaged or married, because Quentin knows that's what Eliot wants, even if Eliot's never said as much out loud. Eliot deserves to have that in the same way he deserves all good things, a family in defiance of the one it seems he grew up with.

They order their food and continue their small talk, Dawn tentatively asking Eliot about his life since leaving Indiana and Eliot responding with the edited-for-public-consumption answers that they must have provided him at the Alumni Association: grad school at Brakebills swapped for grad school at SUNY Purchase, masters in physical magic swapped for a masters in entrepreneurship in the arts, magical event planning swapped for mundane event planning. Eliot never attempts to turn the conversation around, to ask Dawn about her life in the decade since Eliot last saw her; it's rude, on a surface level, but Quentin understands. If their roles were reversed, if it were Quentin's mother sitting there, a single question about her life would open the floodgates to an entire monologue about the unparalleled excellence of the past ten years — implying, of course, that she's much better off without Quentin. He doesn't think that's the case with Dawn, but how could he know?

It's not lost on him that what's occurring now is Eliot monologuing about how much better off he is without his family, but, well. That's different, isn't it?

The conversation lapses into silence once their food is served; Eliot's preference when dining out usually tends towards several courses, but he only ordered an entree and both Quentin and Dawn followed suit. Quentin can't blame him; he doesn't really want to stay here any longer than absolutely necessary either. Five or so minutes have passed when Dawn's knife handle slips slightly in her hand, causing an unearthly screech as it scrapes against the ceramic of her plate. Eliot looks up sharply, plainly annoyed; Quentin snatches his wine glass from the table and takes a much larger drink than he'd intended.

"We should probably stop putting this off," Eliot says. He's looking at Dawn, really looking at her, for the first time all night. "Dear old dad had something he wanted to give me?"

Dawn bites her lip nervously, then sets both her knife and fork down on the plate. She's barely touched her food, Quentin notices. "I want you to know," she says as she reaches for her purse and pulls it into her lap, "that it was never your father's intention to hurt you."

Eliot lets out one barking laugh, loud and false. "You and I both know that isn't true." Quentin's no psychic, but even he can sense the way the atmosphere around Eliot changes, like a late fall breeze suddenly turning frigid. Eliot sets down his utensils too, on either side of his plate, and slides both hands under the tablecloth. Quentin's overwhelmed with the desire to reach for him, to hold his hand, to protect him somehow, but doesn't know if it's allowed.

"I meant about this, Eliot," Dawn says. She's taken a large brown file folder out of her purse, and is clutching it to her chest with both hands, like she's afraid to let it go. "He thought it would be safer if no one knew the truth."

Quentin's mouth is incredibly dry. He shouldn't be here; whatever is about to happen isn't something he's meant to witness. It's above and beyond the stipulations of the Past Pact, if this is something even Eliot doesn't know. Eliot's face is carefully expressionless, but his eyes are unusually wet, and when Quentin finally lets himself reach for his hand under the table he finds it gripping hard on Eliot's knee. Quentin rests his own hand over top of it without pressing down, so Eliot can move away if he wants.

He doesn't.

There's a long moment before Dawn actually offers Eliot the folder, and Eliot pushes his plate aside before he takes it. "You don't have to read it now," Dawn says, her words coming fast, like they had on the phone. Like she's trying to say everything she needs to before Eliot shuts her out. "We can finish dinner first, and you—"

"Of course I'm going to read it now," Eliot interrupts. His skin feels clammy under Quentin's hand. "This is what you came here for. Shouldn't you get to enjoy the fruit of your labor?" Before anyone can say anything else, Eliot opens the folder.

The top item is a plain book with a leather cover, which looks extremely old; there's nothing identifying on it, no title or author or date. Eliot lightly brushes his fingertips over it before flipping it open to the first page.

 _February 1850,_ the book reads in swirling, precise cursive, _Jeremiah manifested, age 16. Natural, plant manipulation (accelerated growth of corn stalk to maturity)._

Quentin feels Eliot's whole body tense, can see him look up abruptly in his peripheral vision. "What the fuck is this?"

_April 1852, Noah manifested, age 19. Healing, injury treatment (mended wild animal bite on cow's leg - specific to cows?)._

"It wasn't up to me," Dawn says. "I always thought you should've known."

_October 1855, Constance manifested, age 8. Illusions, invisibility (missing for two hours during a game of hide-and-seek)._

Eliot turns the page; there's several pages after that are just like the first, years and names and magical disciplines. He flips through them faster and faster, so Quentin can't see more than a word or two at a time — _telepathy, projections, quaeromancy_ — until he finally reaches a page with only two entries.

_May 1980, Gregory manifested, age 15. Natural, herbalism (enhanced relaxation properties of herbal tea)._

_November 2007, Eliot manifested, age 15. Physical, telekinesis (levitated a hay bale in the barn)._

"Your little book is wrong," Eliot snaps, punctuating it by slamming the cover shut. "I manifested telekinesis when I was 14."

Dawn's face is suddenly very pale. "What?"

"Remember Logan Kinnear's accident?" Dawn's eyes widen and she looks down at her lap, which makes it obvious that she does remember. Quentin's head is spinning. " _That_ was when I manifested telekinesis. When I shoved the kid who beat me up in front of a bus. I was just too fucking scared to use it again until that night in the barn. Do you have a pen? I'll make the correction right now."

"Eliot." Her voice is wavering, her eyes filled with tears, her hand covering her mouth. "I promise you, I swear we had no idea."

"Of course you didn't." Eliot's hand is trembling under Quentin's, and Quentin presses his palm down hard enough that it hurts. "Why would I have told you? Why do you think I lied and said I hadn't seen it happen? You were both so scared to let me be who I was. Why should I think this would be any different?" Eliot looks back down at the folder and moves the little brown book out of the way to reveal a messy stack of papers. Quentin's vision blurs as he reads the certificate on top.

 _Brakebills University for Magical Pedagogy_  
_has conferred upon_  
_Gregory Waugh_  
_the degree of_  
_Master of Natural Magic_  
_Herbalism Specialization_

"Explain this to me, please," Eliot says, his voice vibrating with barely contained emotion. "I have a whole fucking family line of magicians. My own fucking father went to Brakebills. And even though you _knew_ I had magic, you hid all of that from me."

"He thought it would be better—"

"I'd love to know how he thought it could've been worse." Eliot grabs his napkin with his free hand and rubs it quickly over his face. It doesn't do much good; the tears he wiped away are instantly replaced with new ones. "I killed Logan and I couldn't tell anyone."

All the air rushes out of Quentin's lungs. Eliot's willingness to go along with the terms of the Past Pact had never just been about his family; it had also been about this, a horrible accident that he'd been convinced he had to keep secret. He's filled with the sudden desire to leave, not because of the conflict he's being forced to witness, but because he wants Eliot's pain to stop, to take him away to somewhere safe and hidden, where nothing can ever hurt him again.

It doesn't work like that, of course; Quentin, of all people, knows that. But that's never stopped him from wanting.

"I'm so sorry," Dawn is saying, openly sobbing, tears running down her cheeks. "Your father, he— he wanted to leave it all behind, and Brakebills—"

"What," Eliot says, his voice sharp and dangerous, "did Brakebills do?"

"The Alumni Association," Quentin says. He hadn't meant to speak out loud; both Eliot and Dawn look at him, like they'd forgotten he was there. "R-right? They helped him cover it all up." Like they'd helped Eliot yesterday. Like they'd helped Quentin two years ago.

"Your father contacted them again, you know. After you left home, to see if there was anything they could do to make sure you were safe. He really did care about you, Eli, you have to—"

"So what you're telling me is that Brakebills sought me out because of my father. I'm a fucking— a fucking _legacy student._ " Eliot takes in a shuddering breath; Quentin's never seen him so visibly upset, which is really saying something. "Did the Alumni Association give you my phone number?"

Dawn's face visibly crumples, which answers the question all on its own. She stares down at her barely-touched dinner and admits, "They also portaled me here."

"I have to go," Eliot says, wrenching his hand free from under Quentin's and gathering the contents of the folder in his arms. His chair legs scrape loudly on the tile when he stands up, and he leaves it askew in the middle of the aisle between tables as he stumbles away, through the restaurant and out the front door, leaving Quentin alone with the emotional ruin that is Dawn Waugh.

All of Quentin's instincts tell him to get up now, to run after Eliot, but he can't make himself go yet. He can't stop thinking about what Eliot said, after his mother's phone call: _We were both just trying to survive._

"Um," Quentin says. Dawn looks up, surprised, like she also expected Quentin to immediately follow her son out the door. Not sure what else to do, he takes the napkin from his lap and holds it out to her. She seems suspicious, but takes it, using it to delicately dab at her eyes. "Listen, I. Eliot and I never really talk about our pasts, so this was, like, a pretty big revelation to me. All of it, not just the magic stuff. I mean, I knew Eliot was magic, we both went to Brakebills actually, but—" He bites his own tongue, cuts off his own inane tangent. "Not the point. The point is, I don't know anything about you. Maybe you were a good mother in literally every other way. But, um." He doesn't mean to laugh, but it slips out of him, completely inappropriately. "You really could not have fucked this up any worse."

Dawn just stares at him, totally dumbfounded. She opens her mouth, like she's about to protest or apologize, but— Quentin doesn't care.

"I wish I could say it was nice to meet you," Quentin tells her. He stands up, pushes in both his own chair and Eliot's, and fixes Dawn with his most Eliot-esque false smile. "And if you ever contact my Eliot again without his explicit consent, I'll make you regret it."

\--

Quentin finds Eliot about a half a block away, sitting on a set of steps leading to a darkened storefront, one knee drawn up to his chest. He has the little brown book in his hand, a tiny globe of magical light hovering above it to illuminate the pages. It's the sort of cantrip that Quentin is too nervous to do in mixed company most of the time, but Eliot's always been a little more lax in that regard. _No one ever notices the tiny spells,_ Eliot had told Quentin once, when he'd casually lit a cigarette with a burst of flame in the middle of a crowded sidewalk. _Honestly, it's New York City. I could fly myself down the street and most people wouldn't bat an eye._

" _Mary's Spectral Rock-Shatter,_ " Eliot says, and it takes Quentin a moment to realize he's reading from the book. " _Breaks up rocks of small-to-medium size for safer plowing._ That would've been nice to know when I was getting dragged out of bed at three in the morning to pick up rocks before elementary school."

Quentin bites back the urge to ask if Eliot is okay; he knows full well the answer is no. He hesitates for a moment before forcing himself to move, to go and sit next to Eliot on the step. "There's a whole spellbook in there, too?"

"Nothing too wild or crazy. Lots of simple spells to help out around the farm. No knowledge kids in my family, unsurprisingly." Eliot closes the book, sets it aside on top of the folder at his feet. The ball of light snuffs out with a wave of his hand. "This was such a fucking mistake."

"Maybe," Quentin admits, which makes Eliot huff out a laugh. "I mean, you had to, right? Otherwise you always would've wondered what your father left for you."

"Of course I would've." Eliot tucks his chin over his knee, staring out at the cars driving by. "How did you get so fucking wise?"

Eliot doesn't know what he's asking. Quentin's well aware of that. But— "Do you really want to know?"

"Fuck, right, sorry." Eliot blows out a breath, rolls his eyes at himself. "The Pact."

"I mean, yeah, but." Quentin balls his hands into fists, nails digging into the flesh of his palms. "I learned an epic fuckton of shit about you tonight, El. I kind of feel like I owe you something."

"You don't owe me anything," Eliot says. "I told you that already. I probably would've had a second murder on my hands if you hadn't been here with me tonight." He glances at Quentin, only for a moment. "I'm pretty sure I'm joking."

Quentin can't stop himself from inappropriately laughing again. "Apparently the Alumni Association will help you cover up just about anything."

They lapse into silence — or, at least, as silent as a New York street ever gets. Quentin's mind is racing, replaying the scene in the restaurant, thinking about Eliot's past, imagining the hurt he grew up with and the betrayal he must feel now. It doesn't seem fair to turn everything around, to make it about himself, but he doesn't know if he'll ever summon up the courage again. He's built himself a doorway from the pieces Eliot left him, and now he has to walk through it.

"Do you know Fillory?"

Eliot looks up, startled. There are tear tracks standing out sharply on his cheeks. "The kids' books? Margo loves them. Couldn't convince me to read them though."

"Because you don't read," Quentin says, completing Eliot's thought. It's amazing how much he knows about Eliot, despite not really knowing anything. "Yeah, so, uh. Fillory is real. And I went there."

"What—?"

"The whole class did, actually." The words are tumbling out of Quentin's mouth now, almost faster that he can form them. He's never told _anyone_ about this, other than Dean Fogg, who knew most of it already. "That's where we were, the class before your year. We got magicked to Fillory and we were there for three years." He stops, takes a deep breath. " _I_ was there for three years."

Eliot's staring at him, open-mouthed, and Quentin has to look away, up at the sky. There's an almost unbearable few seconds of silence before Eliot picks up the logical thread: "Why did you leave?"

The tears that Quentin expected rush into his eyes, into his throat. "I didn't," he says. "I was kicked out."

It had been Quentin's literal dream come true: wandering into the castle town of Whitespire with Julia and Josh and Victoria at his heels and being instantly identified by the townspeople as Children of Earth. He can still remember with vicious, pain-soaked clarity the way the ritual knife had sliced into his palm, drawing blood — the blood of a high king. He had spent his whole life wishing he could be the protagonist and now he _was,_ indisputably, marked as such by the scar on his palm and the crown on his head. He’d belonged somewhere, finally; he'd thought he'd found that place at Brakebills, but it had become quickly apparent that everyone else in his class was smarter, better, _more_ than Quentin could ever hope to be. In Fillory, ascended to the exact throne he'd spent his childhood imagining, his life had felt _right._

Then, after three years of relatively peaceful reign, a group of Fillorians had mounted an uprising. Quentin made every attempt he could think of to quell it, but they wouldn't be deterred; they were unhappy, in that vague way in which people are often unhappy, and Quentin finally fell back on his most desperate solution: he went out into the forest to seek the Great Bird of Peace. He tracked it down after days of hunting and, exhausted, made his most impassioned plea, but the Bird had simply tilted its head at him and intoned, _Oh, High King Quentin, don't you see? You are the source of this conflict._ Quentin, stunned, had assumed the Bird meant a collective you, the monarchy, the Children of Earth, but when he expressed this belief, both Ember and Umber had appeared on either side of the Bird, Umber looking grave, Ember looking delighted. _No, no, High King Quentin,_ Ember had said gleefully, _the problem is you, and you alone. And now you must go, forever._ He wasn't allowed another word of protest, wasn't able to say goodbye to Victoria or Josh or, worst of all, Julia, before the God of Chaos had spirited him away to the Neitherlands. He could tell Eliot all of this, and Eliot would listen, but what difference would it make? It wouldn't change the reality that Fillory didn't want him anymore.

"When I got back..." Quentin has to stop and rein himself in; he hardly ever lets himself think about this part, when he'd wandered through the Neitherlands for what felt like days, trying to find the fountain to Earth, wondering if maybe he'd be better off disappearing to another world entirely— but constantly looping back to the Fillory fountain, iced over, gone forever. "When I got back, I went to Brakebills. I was so fucking angry; it seemed so clear to me that everything that had happened was Brakebills's fault. I marched right into Fogg's office and just— totally lost my mind, honestly. He just kept saying _you signed a waiver, you knew the risks,_ and finally I couldn't fucking take it anymore and picked him up with my magic, slammed him against the wall." He can feel Eliot go very still beside him, hear the sharp intake of Eliot's breath; he realizes, belatedly, that he probably should've left this part out. "Sorry, that wasn't—"

"It's okay," Eliot says. He doesn't sound okay at all.

"Anyway," Quentin blurts out, as though he can somehow cover up the hurt he's done by burying it with more words, "even though, or maybe because, I broke his stupid fucking nose, Fogg basically gave me whatever I wanted. He handed me my degree right then and there, even though I never even finished a full year at Brakebills. And the Alumni Association helped me find a job and an apartment. But, um." He takes a deep breath and looks down at his hands, at the dull white scar that bisects his left palm. "I wasn't exactly. Doing very well. Mentally. For a while. Which wasn't anything new for me, but." He balls his hands into fists so he doesn't have to watch them shake. "They wanted to assign me a roommate, basically to keep tabs on me. So I said, what if I find my own roommate instead?" A smile ghosts across his lips, in spite of everything. "And, well, you know the rest."

He glances over to Eliot after a few moments of silence; Eliot is just staring straight ahead, unfocused, worrying his bottom lip with his teeth.

"El," Quentin whispers, "please say something."

And Eliot says, "I found your no-secret-cutting potion."

Quentin's chest contracts painfully; he feels dizzy. "What? When?"

"Maybe three days after I moved in." Eliot still isn't looking at him, as though it's somehow safer to make this confession if he's talking past Quentin instead of to him. "I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. You're not the only one with a history of self-destructive behavior." In spite of Eliot's apparent commiseration, Quentin's shame still burns hot and bright. "It's not the sort of thing I would ever bring up, even if I hadn't assumed it'd be a violation of the Pact. It didn't—" He stops, frowns. "I _want_ to say it didn't change the way I thought about you, but it did. Just not the way I'm sure you thought it would."

Quentin thinks back to that first week he and Eliot had lived together, trying to determine the delineation between when Eliot hadn't known that Quentin wanted to die, and when he had. But no matter how much he microanalyzes, all of his memories of Eliot are the same: bright, smiling, friendly. Eager to cook but not at all eager to clean up after himself. Equally happy talking Quentin's ear off as he was listening to Quentin ramble on about nerdy shit that Eliot couldn't possibly care about, but also somehow content with simply existing in the same space as Quentin, not speaking at all.

"I wasn't a plant," Eliot says breathlessly. He turns to Quentin finally, a look of horror painted across his face. "I swear to god, Quentin, you have to believe me."

It hadn't even occurred to Quentin before that moment how easy it would've been, for Fogg to choose some unassuming recent Brakebills graduate and ask them to respond to Quentin's LiSpace ad. The idea that he could've spent the past two years under the watchful eye of the Brakebills board in direct contradiction of his own wishes makes him feel sick, and the worst part about it is he's almost surprised to find out that it _isn't_ what happened. He understands, too, why this would be so important to Eliot, after what he's learned about the role of Brakebills in his own hidden past. "I believe you," he says, relieved when he sees the panic drain from Eliot's expression. "Fogg would never pick you to be his lackey. You're too chaotic evil."

Eliot looks surprised, then laughs. "I would take immense delight in ruining all of his dastardly schemes. He would've fired me for excessive competence." He glances away, glances back. "It took me a long time before I felt like I was free from my past. Obviously, it turned out I wasn't free at all, but. When I read your LiSpace post, and when you explained the Past Pact to me, I knew that whatever it was that you were trying to free yourself from was significant, or recent, or both. Finding your potion only confirmed that for me."

"But," Quentin says, feeling like his tongue is tangling in his mouth, "you said it changed the way you thought about me."

"Not the way you thought it would," Eliot reminds him. Quentin sees Eliot's fingers twitch out of the corner of his eye before he feels the gentle pressure of fingertips against the base of his palm, nudging his fist open so that Eliot can hold his hand, fingers woven together. "I wanted to keep you, Quentin."

The second week after Eliot had moved in had been a bad one for Quentin; he'd had trouble sleeping, haunted by dreams of Fillory and Ember's voice, and his exhaustion led to him making mistakes at work, continuously, to the point that, by Friday, he was convinced that the only thing keeping him from being fired was Fogg's letter of recommendation. He spent the weekend trying to maintain a facade of normalcy, not wanting to betray to his extremely cool and attractive new roommate that Quentin was actually a fucking disaster of a person, barely able to hold it together. He'd left the apartment on Saturday afternoon to take a walk, a completely ordinary activity that was definitely not a desperate attempt to trick his brain into producing some serotonin in the sunshine; when he'd come back, he'd found Eliot in the kitchen, apron on, sleeves rolled up. _Ever baked bread before?_ Eliot had asked, and when Quentin had dumbfoundedly told him no, he'd made a little scoffing noise. _You're going to learn,_ Eliot had told him, his tone brooking no argument, and proceeded to teach Quentin how to knead the dough and how to recognize when it had reached the correct consistency to be left to rise. _You're a natural,_ Eliot had said afterwards, knocking his arm against Quentin's shoulder as he covered the bowl with a dish towel. _I think I'll keep you._

"I know that was selfish," Eliot is saying now, his words faster-paced than usual, "and presumptuous, because I had Mike so what right did I have to call dibs on you, but I—"

Quentin leans in fast, before he can lose his nerve, and presses a soft kiss to Eliot's mouth.

He expects Eliot to look upset when Quentin pulls away, but he's just— stunned, mostly. His mouth is slightly open, like he's not sure what to do with it now, but then he seems to make his own decision and leans back in, hand hovering for a moment over Quentin's shoulder before it settles on the back of his neck, reeling him in for another kiss, firmer, deeper. He can taste the tannins from Eliot's wine still lingering on his tongue when he presses it against Quentin's lips, into Quentin's mouth; it feels _right,_ in a way that he hasn't felt since he was last in Castle Whitespire.

But no, that isn't true. Most things with Eliot feel right, when he lets them.

Eliot breaks the kiss, but he doesn't let Quentin go. His eyes flutter open, and he smiles, which quickly becomes a soft laugh. "We're a romcom cliche."

Quentin laughs too; he's watched enough movies with Eliot over the past two years to know exactly what he means. "You should've known better. This is how fake dating always turns out."

Another laugh, as Eliot tips his head up to press a soft kiss to Quentin's forehead. "Maybe that's what I was hoping for."

There's a moment where Quentin is convinced he can't have heard Eliot correctly, and he searches Eliot's face for any trace of mockery or insincerity. It doesn't feel real; it feels like another one of Ember's tricks. "Just so we're clear," Quentin says, before he can stop himself, "if this is just some kind of heightened emotions, heat of the moment, temporary fling situation, I can, like. Deal with that. It's fine, if that's what you want to do. I'd like to keep being your friend and your roommate, but if you're looking for, um, benefits—"

"Quentin," Eliot interrupts, brushing his fingertips over Quentin's lips to silence him, "what part of _I want to keep you_ was ambiguous?"

"Uh, the part where it's about _me?_ " Eliot frowns, clearly displeased, tiny crease appearing between his eyebrows. "I just mean— I lost Brakebills, I lost Fillory... I don't exactly have a great track record with getting to keep the things I love."

Something changes in Eliot's expression; it reminds Quentin of being in Whitespire, of watching the twin moons rise through the window of his tower. "You love me?"

Quentin has never thought those words before — _I love Eliot_ — but he thinks it might be the most true thing he's ever said. "I know what brand of eyeliner you use, El," he says, smiling, running a finger along the curve of Eliot's cheek, under the smudge of black at his lash line. "I'm pretty sure that's love."


End file.
